My goal was to have the bathroom finished so I could reveal it to my husband after Hurricane Irma caused his ship to sortie. But thanks to extra time spent on the cabinets and the kids out of school for a week, I was hanging the towel rack minutes before I had to pick him up. Now I have a better understanding of the HGTV shows that always seem to be struggling to finish projects at the last minute.

I’m going to break it down into all the parts and put it together for you at the end.

Walls:

I knew I wanted gray walls and thought Pinterest would help me quickly and easily pick a color. But then I would get to a store and see all the grays and it’s a little overwhelming. In the end, I tested a couple colors – Benjamin Moore Coventry Gray and Glidden Pebble Gray (but in BM sample pot). Both were a little darker than I wanted, so I went with one shade lighter than Coventry Gray, which is Stonington Gray.

Painting 10 foot ceilings in a bathroom was a lot harder than I realized. I had to hang off the ladder and do some very careful stretching to cut in near the ceiling in some areas.

Towel Rack:

I knew what I wanted – a rustic, stained wood towel rack with dark/black hooks that were big enough to hang towels but not too big, and not too expensive. I looked at a lot of options on Etsy but they were more than I wanted to spend. In other online stores, they didn’t seem quite sturdy or rustic enough. So I decided to make my own.

On one of the days that my paint samples were shaking, I picked up the supplies. I didn’t necessarily need a tutorial but my vision and thought process were validated with this one.

I pulled out the circular saw to trim my board and the rest was pretty easy. Sand, make it rustic by banging at it with a hammer in certain parts, stain, two coats of polyurethane, add hooks, add hanging hardware and hang.

This was one of the last things I finished in the bathroom because I wasn’t sure how to hang it. It needed to be something that wouldn’t easily come off the wall as towels are added and removed and it needed to support the weight of some of our heavy towels. I decided on flush mount brackets and probably should have thought of it earlier, as I used them in our master bedroom in Virginia to hang a headboard once.

Mirrors:

There seems to be a trend to everything I added to this bathroom – I searched forever online to find just the right item! (And I suspect this will be the case in the whole house.) The mirrors were no different…I wanted my vision realized and I wanted it to cost as little as possible. I bounced back and forth between wanting rustic wooden mirrors or more modern dark mirrors. Most of the rustic mirrors were out of my price range. I ordered a couple from Bed, Bath & Beyond – they were the right price but ended up being too small. Finally I increased my budget and went with a more modern mirror that I found on Amazon. And I love them!

Shelves:

While looking around in World Market one day, I came across their mix and match shelving. The oak shelf with a natural edge was the perfect color, size and style. Otherwise, I would have waited until the Ikea near me opened…”late fall” can’t come soon enough.

Accessories & Towels:

I’ve been eyeing the Turkish towel trend for a while so I finally ordered a couple to try.

We are not people who hide all our toiletries and keep the counters clear in the bathroom (especially in the middle of the update as shown above). Instead, I used a couple of items I had around the house to make them look a little prettier. I have had the copper container for a couple years, but I don’t feel like it’s ever found just the “right” place until it moved into the bathroom. I recently picked up the tray, hoping to use it in the kitchen, but it was too big. The wood color matches my towel rack and shelf.

Here is a before picture – it captures most of the bathroom, including me and the dog jumping on the bed because she is crazy when I take pictures.

You might notice a picture across from the shelf, on the other side of the tub. It is a picture of houses on The Battery in Charleston in the middle of a storm. We’ve had it since we lived there in 2002. I decided I liked it in this spot but it also amused me because it reminded me of when the kids were little and turned on the jets in the bathtub and they created their own storm. When I went to rehang it after painting, just before Hurricane Irma arrived, I told my daughter that it could look like that in Charleston again. Eerily enough, my sister sent me this comparison.

My husband suggested I pick one space to focus on at a time as I truly make this house ours. I started with the master bathroom. My head is still swirling with all the little updates and projects I want to work on in every room in the house, so I believe he was trying to infuse a little focus to my projects. It was helpful when I was out shopping to put the blinders on to anything not related to the bathroom. (Except for the times when I was out looking for the perfect TV stand.)

We didn’t replace any flooring or major fixtures so that is why I’m calling this a “mini” makeover. But it didn’t feel very mini when I was cutting in paint on the 10 foot ceilings over the bathtub!

It started with the idea that I wanted to paint the bathroom cabinets. I had toyed around with making our kitchen island navy blue and ultimately decided not to, but figured I could use that blue into the bathroom. I thought I was going to use Benjamin Moore Hale Navy and that’s the only color card I got. I decided it might be a little dark and went with the lighter color just above – Newburyport Blue.

Bathroom Before Shot

I read through several tutorials on painting cabinets and what supplies to use. My process ended up being a hybrid of what I read and recommendations from people in the aisles of Home Depot and Ace Hardware. It’s a fairly simple process but it ended up being pretty time consuming. It didn’t help that I had to prepare for a hurricane in the middle of it all. I really wanted to have the bathroom done before Hurricane Irma arrived so after I got my water and gas and had my evacuation plan in place, I had cabinets to paint!

Since you can find many many cabinet painting tutorials on the web, I won’t go through the steps but I’ll share some of the problems I encountered.

The primer came off the cabinet frames in the bathroom really easily after the first coat. I was able to rub it all off with a rag. I don’t know what the issue was so I gave it a much better sanding and started over. The primer seemed to adhere to the doors a little better and I didn’t need to start over but I did give them a 3rd coat of primer.

I realized that the humidity was way too high to paint in the garage. After the first coat of primer, I brought the doors in for painting and drying and back out for sanding.

Adding cabinet hardware is no joke! I originally made a cardboard template. It worked for the small drawer but I moved on to the bigger drawer and drilled holes that were not level. I bought a plastic template and tried that. None of the holes seemed to line up centered where I wanted them. Finally I realized that my quilting rulers would probably help me and they did. But I still made mistakes and drilled some holes on the bottom of two doors instead of the top. Wood filler to the rescue. I drilled the holes in the middle of the primer stage so I could sand the rough edges and not mess with the final coat.

More issues with the drawers. I took the drawer face off the middle drawer (like I saw the professionals in my kitchen do.) I couldn’t get the screws out of the bottom drawer so I taped it off and painted it while still connected to the drawer. Putting the 2nd drawer back together took me many many tries. I could not get the face lined up with the pre-existing screws and even when I decided to make new holes, I couldn’t get the face lined up with the rest of the drawers. And then the handle looked crooked. It took me a few days to finish installing the drawers as I would have to set them aside and wait for my patience to come back. And maybe my perfectionism interfered a bit.

I was ready to call in a professional at one point to get my drawers and hardware level. I don’t think they’re perfect but I persevered and with everything put back together, I don’t notice it anymore.

So the cabinets are painted and I love how they look! Just looking back at the really dark before pictures makes me so glad that I tried this even though it was a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be.

I’ll share the rest of my bathroom updates in the next post! (That’s why I cropped the cabinet shot so much!)

Details:

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This custom wedding quilt is my first quilt finish of 2017 and I’m sharing it in the Fall 2017 Blogger’s Quilt Festival! A customer asked for a quilt that her wedding guests could sign in lieu of a guest book. She and her fiancé are huge Iowa Hawkeyes fans so she wanted the quilt in Hawkeyes colors. I appliquéd the logo and their names into bigger blocks to personalize it. I was inspired by a triangle quilt in similar colors so I threw a few triangles into the mix as well.

This was a fun quilt to put together, except for the 2 extra trips to the fabric store to get more fabric. I made several cutting mistakes! Luckily I found a great local quilt store in the process.

Details

Fabrics – Bella Solids in Black, Zen Gray, Yellow and White

Backing Fabric – Moda Grunge Hits the Spot Wideback in Black Dress

Quilting – Straight lines, in gray (but I wish I had tried a variegated thread for this one)

We knew that we wanted a new couch for our new house. We had leather furniture that we bought second hand almost 10 years ago. It was still in good shape, but it was never my favorite furniture. It didn’t feel cozy to me although it was easy to clean off dog prints and dirty messy child prints.

We began the couch search last fall (2016). We looked around at a few stores and found one that we liked at Haverty’s. My job was to go back and order it in the spring so it would be ready for delivery as soon as we moved.

But I can’t just let a couch search be that simple. What if there was a unicorn couch out there and I hadn’t searched enough to find the best couch ever for the best price ever? Also, there was Pinterest. If you check out my Family Room Ideas board, you’ll see that I found many couches that I loved from places like Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel. And you’ll see a few sneak peaks of the rest of the decor that I ended up getting.

When it was time to order the couch, I knew that Crate & Barrel was too far out of the budget. But I thought maybe with a good sale I could get a Pottery Barn couch. I went to the store and looked at the one I liked. I looked at swatch after swatch after swatch. And of course the swatch I ultimately liked was the most expensive fabric.

Then I did more online searching to see if someone else had purchased the couch I loved with the fabric I loved and put it on Pinterest for me. Nope.

I also went back to Haverty’s and looked at that couch and looked at fabric swatches there. I’m getting tired now thinking of all the time I put into couch shopping.

In the end, we went with the Haverty’s Norfolk sectional with custom fabric and a somewhat custom shape. The one pictured online was a little long for our space and I wanted both sides to be the same length. I read some reviews and blog posts about the Pottery Barn couch and decided it wasn’t worth the cost. The Haverty’s couch had a similar look and at little lower price.

The Norfolk sectional used to be called the Piedmont sectional, which is the street we lived on in Virginia when Pat was stationed in Norfolk, so it must have been destined for us. I don’t have a name for the fabric, but it is a black and white mix of fibers that looks grey from a distance. I love the white couches I see all over the vintage farmhouse world, but I knew I didn’t want the maintenance of pulling off the slipcovers and washing them as often as I would need to. It is so hard to picture what a fabric swatch is going to look like when it is covering the whole couch. It was a fingers crossed few months until it was delivered (on our first day in the house) and unwrapped.

I love how it turned out! It is cozy and comfortable and the color is just right – not too dark or light but with a little texture to make it interesting. We are still fighting about who gets the corner seat though! More living room updates next week!

After a year of planning and dreaming about our new house, we moved this summer! We spent the last 5 years as renters and we are so excited to be homeowners again. We spent most of June unpacking and settling into the house and finalizing some of our plans. The kids and I did a lot of traveling in July and now that we’re almost finished with August, I feel like I have finally had a chance to live here and enjoy the house…while still planning more updates.

Let’s start with the exterior. Our neighborhood has a lot of beachy looking houses with pretty pastel colors. Ours is a little more Americana with the blue and light grey colors. I love the two level front porch and I was very excited to get some bunting for the 4th of July!

We have a screened in area in the back and our garage is all the way in the back. Our long driveway has a gate in the middle – we like that we can close the gate and let the dog play in the backyard. This has added a few steps to the process of leaving the house. The garage is connected to the house but there is no door directly from the garage to the house. There is a short walkway from the side/back door to the garage that is covered and screened. So we have to lock the house door (and make sure the other two are locked), open the gates and go back through the screened area to get into the garage and open the garage door. Luckily I often have two helpers who are in charge of the gates.

We have a small back yard and almost no front yard, but across the street is a waterfront park area. There are walking trails, a big pond, a fishing dock and a small playground a few steps away. We love that we have a large area of open space nearby…for football, baseball, softball, tag, etc… and we don’t have to mow it! The view from the front porch is great…we can watch the storms roll in, like this one that came through within an hour of our arrival at our new home!

This was the view on my morning walk with Eve (our dog) last week.

We have already added adirondack chairs to the front porch and are looking forward to working on the backyard and screened porch area a bit too.

About Me

Hi, I'm Teresa. Welcome to Capturing the Threads, my blog about the literal threads I sew and the more figurative threads of life too. I'm a wife and mom and I'm sharing the quilts and the homes I create and nurture along with a dose of family life...because that's usually the funny stuff! Thanks for visiting!

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